False Conception Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “Bail been set?”

  Harrison shook his head. “Not till arraignment.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Tomorrow, unless he gets a continuance.”

  “He going down to Bruno tonight?”

  Harrison shook his head. “Not unless the arraignment’s delayed. We’ll keep him till he pleads.”

  “He seen a lawyer?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Deputy Public Defender wanted to chat, but Charley wouldn’t see him.”

  “He made any calls?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anyone at all been in with him?”

  “Just Gutters.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Deputy that brought him in. Larry Gutters. New guy.”

  “Charley say anything to him?”

  Harrison shrugged. “He asked if anyone was hurt, I guess. In the shooting, he meant. That was about it as far as I heard. He was Mirandized and all. Not that he needed it. Charley was a cop when the only Miranda was a tap dancer.”

  I smiled. “You talk to Charley yourself, Gil?”

  “I tried.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Not much.”

  “How’s his head?”

  “Seemed real calm. I’ve seen lifers more on edge than he is.”

  I waited for elaboration but didn’t get any. “Can you go back and tell him I’m here?”

  Harrison shrugged. “I can tell him, but it won’t do no good.”

  “Why not?”

  “He ain’t talking about what he did, he ain’t seeing no one he don’t have to, and he don’t want nothing from the outside. All he’s doing is staring at walls and popping his knuckles.”

  “You sure he hasn’t flipped out?”

  “Sounds sane as Santa to me. Made a joke about the Simpson trial. Talked about the swill that passes for food down at Bruno. Talked about a guy we both know ate his piece last week, worked with Charley out in Ingleside way back when. But he wouldn’t talk about the shooting and he wouldn’t let me get anything for him—no candy, no smokes, no nothing. He’s hurting a bit—kind of bent over and he limps some. Must have strained something when the civilian fought him for the gun.”

  I rubbed my eyes and looked around, as though help might materialize like Casper, as though an explanation might be written on the jailhouse walls, but all I saw was stone and steel.

  “Anyone in the department have any idea why this went down?” I asked.

  Gil shook his head. “No one I talked to.”

  I sighed and gave up. “Okay, Gil. Tell Charley I’m here, will you? Ask if he’ll see me. If he won’t, ask if he wants me to get anything for him. And ask him what lawyer he wants me to talk to. And if he wants me to call anyone else.”

  Gil shrugged. “I’ll tell him, but it won’t matter. It’s like he’s in a daze or something. Like his brain shut down and he don’t know where he is or what he done to get him here. Only other guys I seen like that was the ones on death row back when I was a ranger in Texas, guys who’d been there so long their appeals was up and their lawyers had quit and they was about to be strapped in the chair. Scared half to death already, was what it looked like. Only Charley ain’t scared, he’s just … sluggish. I got a bird dog gets that way come spring. Vet says it’s allergies, but I figure with Sleet it’s something else.”

  With that bit of insight, Gil left me in the waiting room and disappeared down the hall beyond the bars and screens that separated the good guys from the bad guys and their keepers. Beyond the screens in the bowels of the building, a row of prisoners came back from across the street, herded by a silent sheriff, linked by a shiny chain. From the expressions on their faces, the system hadn’t bought whatever they were selling it. One of them glanced my way—he looked like he wanted to kill me just for being alive: I was white and he wasn’t; I was in civvies and he was in county coveralls; I could leave and he couldn’t—plenty of grounds for murder right there. I wondered what could have possibly put Charley Sleet in the same frame of mind.

  When Gil came back he was shaking his head. “No dice, Marsh. Says he’s fine; says he don’t need nothing; says for you not to bother coming back, to let things lay till they work themselves out.”

  “But—”

  Gil held up a hand. “I know. You’re his buddy; you want to help him shed this. But he don’t have to see anyone except the police or the D.A. and not even them if he lawyers up.” Gil shrugged. “Sorry, Marsh, but he stays put till I get an order to let him go or bus him down to Bruno.”

  I got back to the office as ignorant as when I’d left it.

  My first call was to Clay Oerter. “Ready to make a move into derivatives, Marsh?” Clay teased as he came on the line.

  I usually plead poverty at this point, and say something about widows and orphans, but not this time. “Charley’s in trouble,” I said instead. “What kind of trouble?”

  I told him as much as I knew.

  “That’s nuts,” he said when I was through.

  “I know.”

  “But you’re going to straighten it out, right?”

  “I’m going to try. But I’m not sure there’s much straightening to be done.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, there doesn’t seem much doubt that he did it.”

  “What can I do to help?” Clay asked after he told his receptionist to hold his calls. Clay’s a stockbroker; holding calls means missing commissions. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “We’re going to need money,” I told him. “Bail money and lawyer money.”

  “What’s bail likely to be?”

  “Hard to say. The guy’s dead, so they can’t release Charley on recog, On the other hand, he’s a cop, so that should cut him some slack. I’d say between a hundred and five hundred thousand, with bond at ten percent.”

  “How much for the lawyer?”

  “If I can’t convince Jake Hattie to consider his time as a tithe, it’ll be fifty for a retainer at least. And that’s just a down payment.”

  “So we’re talking a hundred grand up front, maybe.”

  “Probably. Call the rest of the poker group. See how tough it’s going to be to raise that much.”

  “It’s not going to be tough at all. I can put up the whole thing if I have to.”

  My grip on the phone relaxed—I’d been more worried about the cash than I realized. “That’s good to know, Clay, but there’s no reason for you to front it all.”

  “No, but I can. And I will.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I can do something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “Hire you to find out what the hell happened in there.”

  “I’m going to do that anyway.”

  “But now you don’t have to do it for free.”

  I laughed. “I hope someone’s recording this—we’d both be up for sainthood. Let’s wait to talk money till we get to the bottom of things.”

  “Fine. But there’s no reason for you to be the only one investing your capital in this.”

  “Or you, either.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do what finance guys always do when they need to spread the risk.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll form a consortium.”

  We exchanged speculation on what Charley could have been thinking, then hung up. I took a minute to wonder if people would rally to me in time of need the way they were rallying to Charley. I decided that’s something you never know until it happens.

  My next call was to the office around the corner. “Hi, Lois. Marsh Tanner. Jake in?”

  “He is, but he’s got someone with him.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll need about that much of his time, as soon as he can fit me in.”

  “I’m sure he’ll see you as soon as he’s free.”

  “I’m sure that will be soon enough.”

>   Look for Past Tense

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  Available from Scribner

  STEPHEN GREENLEAF was educated at Carleton College, at the Boalt Hall School of Law (University of California, Berkeley), and through the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa. After some years practicing law, he began writing fiction in 1977. The latest mystery in his John Marshall Tanner series, Past Tense, is now available in hardcover from Scribner. Mr. Greenleaf lives in Seattle.